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The New Historical Novel in Latin America Pt. II
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来自 University of Virginia 的课程
瘟疫，巫婆，和战争：世界历史小说
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从本节课中
19th Century Historical Fiction
This module dives into the works of Anna Katharine Green and Professor Holsinger provides an overview of the forces that are effecting the craft of historical fiction.
与讲师见面
Bruce HolsingerProfessor
English
Mm-hm.
>> And so we go from stream of consciousness to the
epistolary novel to third person
emmissiant narration to first person narration.
Sometimes we have the point of view of Benito Juarez, other times there are.
And then very importantly and very typically for
the new historical novel reflections by a voice which
is really only un, identifiable as that of the author.
>> Mm-hm.
>> In which he's talking about how he has composed
the text and how what he is doing, writing the.
The, the history of Maximilian and Carlota is important,
and this is a key point, for contemporary Mexico.
And why Mexicans need to know this.
And in, in one very lyrical passage he talks about how Mexicans
have to come to accept Maximilian and Carlota as part of
their history, not reject it as something extraneous to their history.
He said, we have to accept our dictators, we have to accept this foreign invasion.
And this is important because what was happening, and this is the
broader picture, why if, his question would be, why the new historical novel.
Why does he write that?
Why does Garcia Marquez write about the last face of Bolivar?
Why does Mario
[UNKNOWN]
write about the rebellion in the outback in Brazil which
[UNKNOWN]
had written about in
[UNKNOWN].
because if you really think about it, in the
80's a lot of dictatorships are ending in Latin America.
And so with, with the fall of the
dictators, there is the need to rethink national history.
And to rescue national history from the propaganda, or from the,
from the history that had been that had become the official history.
something similar happens in Spain after the Franco regime.
Franco banishes anything Jewish and anything Arabic from his vision of Spain.
And writers after Franco you know, go back and
put in the Arabic and put in the Jewish.
>> So, so it is as if the
new historical novel almost has a reparative role?
>> Yes.
>> With respect to history in, in these countries.
>> Very, has a repairative role.
Insofar as it is itself presenting a rival vision.
But it goes farther than that.
Because one of the things that I have pointed out when
I've written about this, is that we're not talking about historical revisionism.
At first it would seem that it's historical revisionism.
There was the orig, you know, the official story.
And we have, we have to fix it.
Alright, it's not that because it's more radical than that.
Because it is an acknowledgement that history
is written by the winners, an acknowledgement that history can be
manipulated for political reasons. So even as someone like Garcia Marquez
[UNKNOWN]
is trying to focus on aspects of history that have been forgotten.
They are also meditating on the fact that history is a very tenuous thing.
And history is a multi-headed thing.
And it's very, it all depends on the perspective from which you view it.
so there's also I, and I would, that's what I would
say is fundamentally more radical than a revisionist point of view.
Because it calls, philosophically, it calls in to
question the viability and the ontology of historical discourse.
>> And that's a very powerful way to think about how fiction works.
>> That's a very, very powerful fiction and I think these works
come into being because the authors feel that their countries need that.
>> Hmm.
>> So in a sense they become part of a new nation building
project. >> Wow.
>> It's strange because of course these nations are nations that began in
the, in the early 19th Century when they achieved their independence from Spain.
you'd think they would have been done with their nation building.
But one of the things that, that we learn from
these novels is that a country is constantly reinventing itself.
A country is constantly editing its narrative of
who they are. And that has happened in Argentina too.
And in Argentina there is a novel which is
not a historical novel, but is by Mempo Jardinelli.
And it is historical in the sense that it tells the saga of an Italian
family that comes to Argentina in the 1880's
and follows the family's fate through the 1980's.
and the Peron period,
the military junta, and again that novel is
narrated by voices, is a very Faulknerian novel.
I've written about that because I love Faulkner, and
I love As I Lay Dying, and I did
a comparison of As I Lay Dying and that
novel, which is called Santo Oficio de la Memoria.
The title, Santo Oficio de la Memoria, can be translated as holy office of memory.
But there's a bit of a pun because sant'efisio
in Spanish is the name of the inquisition. So there's you know.
>> Okay.
>> It implies a juridical process. >> Uh-huh.
>> An inquest. >> Mm-hm.
>> But it also implies an element of the forment
and the suffering that goes into coming grips with history.
And one of the things that Javanelli is doing there,
which is very important is, he is changing the official
history of argentina by focusing on the immigrant.
Because although all of us know that Argentina is a country of immigrants.
The official story of Argentina for a very,
very long time is that they were somehow
[UNKNOWN].
And, they were somehow Euopean, and the, the Indian past of
Argentina was repressed, and the immigrant past of Argenitina was repressed.
And, in, in, in
[UNKNOWN]
' s novel.
You, you learn amazing things that, for example, that in 1900 the
language you were least likely to hear in the streets of Buenos Aires was Spanish.
You'd be more likely to hear Yiddish or Welsh.
>> Is that right?
>> Or, or English, or Polish, or Russian.
or of course Italian because, about 40% of Argentines
are of Italian extraction. So, Spanish would have been a rarity.
Now if you read the works of Jorge Luis Borges, whom we all love,
but Jorge Luis Borges only reflects in his works, in many of his works.
The, the point of view of the oligarchy.
>> Mm-hm.
>> And of Buenos Aires, that is of Spanish extraction.
The Italian figures are in the background.
>> Okay.
>> They're of course, Indians are very important to
show the valor of those who fought in the frontier.
things like that. >> Right.
There's more nuance than that. >> Right.
>> In this, of course, there's always more nuance in
[INAUDIBLE].
But simplifying a little bit.
that doesn't give you a vision of Argentina as a country of immigrants.
>> Right. >> Which is what Argentina is.
And Argentina is also a country of, of Native Americans.
And speaking of that, there is, a novel that I love very
much and it's written by an author I've been fortunate to, to meet.
Which is Silvia Iparraguirre. And Sylvia Iparraguirre,
wonderful Basque name, no? Sylvia Iparraguirre had, had become
very interested in present day Patagonian Indians.
And in the Tierra Del Fuego and had worked in the reservations.
And she has written a wonderful novel
called Tierra Del Fuego which fortunately is translated.
Same name, Tierra Del Fuego.
And I say fortunately because although Garcia Marquez the General
in His Labyrinth has been translated and Vargas Llosa's the War
of the End of the World has also been translated, tragically
Fernando Del Paso's beautiful Noticias del Imperio has not been translated.
>> That sounds like your next project.
[LAUGH]
>> it would be a lovely project, but American
publishers tend to shy away from 700 age novels.
>> Ah-huh.
[LAUGH]
>> You know.
You're kind of afraid of that, but boy, if I'm lucky enough someday I'll translate
[FOREIGN].
But going back to Sylvia Iparraguirre Iparraguirre does
an amazing thing in this book. Because it is a historical novel about the
encounter of Darwin in the voyage of the Beagle with the Fuegians.
>> Hm. >> With the, with the
[FOREIGN]
Indians.
And I know because I interviewed her that
Sylvia went to London and did research in the
archives of the, of the British navy, and
of course she used the voyage of the Beagle.
>> Mm-hm.
and most of the characters, practically all the characters in
the novel are real characters who appear in Darwin's narrative.
>> Hm. >> And in other historical narratives.
>> Is Darwin himself
a character? >> Darwin appears.
>> Okay.
>> In, in the novel, as does very importantly
the captain of Darwin's ship, who eventually, tragically, commits suicide.
You know, looking in front of his shaving mirror, cutting his throat.
And everything, and she puts all of that there.
But what she does, which is absent in Darwin's text, and when I've
taught this I've had the students look at Darwin's text too, as we look at her text.
is the point of view of the
[INAUDIBLE]
Indians.
That is present and that is a major part of Iparraguirre.
It's the foreground these people, they are the protagonist are her novel, not Darwin.
>> Hm. >> Darwin is
[FOREIGN]
the little doctor. He's in the background.
The young Darwin. >> Right.
It is the Fuegians and then of course she narrates how they come to England, and
what happens to them in the evangelical mission,
where they're aching and what their fate is.
>> Mm-hm.
>> And then they come back.
The story itself it. You almost don't need a novel.
The story.
>> Mm. >> Itself is incredible, that these
>>
[LAUGH]
>> Indians go to London, are taught
English, are supposed to be civilized, come back.
They're supposed to create a mission.
The Indians themselves are suppose to then christianize the rest of the population.
And what happens is when they go back, they go back to being the way they were.
>> Okay.
>> So the mission is a total failure in that sense.
And there are scenes of a trial because then one of the major characters is tried
supposedly for treason and for murder.
and she used the transcripts of the, of the trials.
>> Wow.
>> And she blends all of this together but with a different
switching the point of view from the eurosentic point of
view through the periphery of the Native Americans And
the way they're viewed.
There is another text which, it, it some of these
texts are so hybrid that it becomes difficult to know whether.
>> Right.
>> To call them full-fledged historical novels, and I
guess that's why we call them the new historical novel.
there's another text which is also unknown in English, and perhaps
I should talk about it, because otherwise people won't know about it.
Tomas de Mattos a
you, an Uruguayan novelist, who has written several historical novels,
wrote a beautiful novel back in the, in the 90's.
Called in Spanish, La Fragata De Las Mascaras.
The frigate of the masks.
It's a literal translation.
This is an amazing text because Thomas De Mattos, whom I also got to meet and
interview, Thomas De Mattos is a Melville fanatic,
>> Hm.
>> An absolute Melville fanatic.
Latin-American writers are francophile, but they're amazingly voracious when it
comes to Americ, North-American classics. And Tomas de Mattos just loves Melville.
And his idea was, he took Benito Cereno by Melville,
and you may remember that Benito Cereno is a work of
fiction but is based on a real event that Melville used to.
>> Mm hm.
>> To, you know?
To tell his novel.
And, so then Thomas de Matos, you see the pattern?
>> Mm hm. >> It's slightly similar to.
>> Yeah, yeah. >>
[INAUDIBLE].
Although I think Thomas de Matos novel is earlier.
He takes the text of Benito Cereno.
And then he takes the historical text of what happened with that ship.
If you remember what happens in Benito Cereno
is that on the slave ship, the slaves
>> Revolted
>> Revolted. >> Mutiny.
Yeah.
>> They mutiny.
The slaves mutiny but of course in Buenitos Cereno, naturally, the story is
told the point of, from the point of view of the white man.
[FOREIGN]
Of course tells the whole story from the point of view of the mutineers.
The, the black mutineers.
>> And when was this published?
>> I don't remember the exact date, but I believe it was in the early 90's.
>> Early 90's.
>> Tomรกs De Mattos published La fragata de las mรกscaras de
>> So, one of the things a lot of these novels have in common
is, is a skewed point of view of, kind of revision of point of view.
>> Yes.
>> And in that regard, maybe we could end by going back to where we
began with Azuela.
And I know that the, the cover image for this focus really interesting
so well, tell us what we are seeing here in the, in this photograph?
It's a woodcut.
>> It's a woodcut and the woodcuts were very popular
in, in Mexico before the Revolution and during the Revolution.
Because it was a cheap way of of distributing images to the, the people and
the famous woodcut makers, Guadalupe Posada.
And when we were thinking about the cover
of the book my editor Rick Padhunter found this
this engraving that we're seeing here which is
not by Posada, we don't know who did it.
It's anonymous. And it's called
[FOREIGN]
which means
[FOREIGN]
skull which as you see is revolutionary except he's a skeleton.
>> Uh-huh.
>> Wearing his sombero and you know, with
his rifle on a very skeletal horse also.
and of course all of these very stark
image because they're all in black and white.
and I, I'm very grateful to Rick Hunter for, for finding
that print that we could use for the cover of the book.
Certainly is attention-getting.
>> It's beautiful.
>> Yeah.
>> Well, Gustavo Pellon, thank you so much for joining our class.
>> Thank you very much for inviting me. >> And this concludes unit three.
